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TRANSACT IONS EDMONDS ENGINEERING JOINS DEWBERRY Dewberry , a privately held professional services firm, announced the acquisition of Edmonds Engineering . Edmonds Engineering is a full-service mechanical and electrical design and facilities engineering company based in the Southeast. The more than 75 person firm has five locations with offices in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, with its headquarters located in Birmingham, Alabama. “Our immediate comradery and strategic alignment are two of the many reasons why Edmonds Engineering is excited to join Dewberry. Thiswill allowus toprovide resources from a national firm with expertise across the U.S. and encompassing many markets and services,” says Edmonds Engineering CEO Dan Blackman, PE. “We anticipate business as normal with our leadership and project staff in place with outstanding opportunities for our staff to have improved access to training and development programs, an expanded knowledge base, and project diversity, which we will leverage in support of our clients and continue our culture of execution.”
“As a family-owned, client-centric, and community-driven firm, we believe that welcoming Edmonds Engineering into Dewberry is a strategic move that will allow us all to better serve our clients, given that both organizations have similar values and goals,” says Dewberry Executive Chairman of the Board Barry K. Dewberry. “Edmonds Engineering has a large footprint in the southeast, and a strong reputation as an MEP firm in several market segments, including healthcare, education, laboratories, municipal, industrial, commercial, and federal,” adds Dewberry Chief Executive Officer Donald E. Stone, Jr., PE. Dewberry Chief Operating Officer Dan M. Pleasant, PE, says, “As we welcome Edmonds Engineering, we are able to provide our clients across the federal, commercial, and state/ local markets with added capacity and deeper subject matter expertise from an expanded geographic platform.” “Dewberry’s existing MEP service group of more than 200 is thrilled to welcome Edmonds Engineering,” says Dewberry Senior Vice
President Shepard Hockaday, PE, LEED AP. “As we continue to make clients a priority in healthcare, education, community facility, energy, industrial, and water market segments, Dewberry | Edmonds will be a welcome and natural fit with how we do business.” As Dewberry | Edmonds, the firm’s existing leadership will continue to lead operations across the various Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee offices, delivering quality services to their clients. Dewberry is a leading, market-facing firm with a proven history of providing professional services to a wide variety of public- and private-sector clients. Recognized for combining unsurpassed commitment to client service with deep subject matter expertise, Dewberry is dedicated to solving clients’ most complex challenges and transforming their communities. Established in 1956, Dewberry is headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, with more than 50 locations and more than 2,000 professionals nationwide.
MARK HIRSCHI, from page 9
mentoring without trust is impossible. Without trust, potential mentors hold on to information to avoid losing their standing and mentees may withhold questions that they perceive to be foolish or elementary and will be distrustful of information they do receive. Finally, mentors should not forget soft skills. It is important that firm leaders teach younger employees the business side of their profession. Communication, project management, contract review, insurance, licensing, proposal writing, fee development, business development, marketing, and other topics that dominate firm leadership’s time are excellent topics for discussion. Covering these topics not only trains future leaders for the business but also prevents mentoring from straying too far into the technical realm and reassures young employees of senior leaders’ contributions to the firm, that they are not just reaping the rewards for younger employees’ efforts. Personal skills are also good topics. Well-rounded and happy people make good employees. Don’t be afraid to coach on financial literacy, saving for retirement, mental wellness, organization, and other topics relevant to promoting employees’ wellbeing outside of the workplace. Firms should just take care to ensure that mentors are competent to discuss these topics and that mentors are aware of topics that need to remain off limits for human resources, legal, political, or other reasons. By establishing and maintaining a strong culture of mentoring, firms can ensure knowledge is transferred to younger generations and not lost to employee turnover while naturally developing future leaders from within. MARK HIRSCHI is an associate with BASE, based out of its Chicago office. Connect with him on LinkedIn and contact him at mhirschi@ baseengr.com.
generations are naturally inquisitive and actively seek out mentoring, thus diminishing the need for a formal program to drive mentorship. Without the formal program, we are able to follow a more organic approach and allow younger employees to gravitate to different mentors for different reasons, whether that’s personal preference or the natural tendency for mentors to have different areas of expertise. This approach also allows mentors to emerge naturally as long as they have the inclination and are supported by firm leadership in doing so. In an environment where they can connect naturally, mentorship will happen on a regular basis just through day-to-day conversation. Some of the best mentoring at BASE occurs during impromptu shared lunches, breaks, and downtime. "By establishing and maintaining a strong culture of mentoring, firms can ensure knowledge is transferred to younger generations and not lost to employee turnover while naturally developing future leaders from within." Another key aspect in establishing a mentoring culture is maintaining a healthy team environment built around trust. Mentoring is founded on trust, with mentees trusting that the information mentors communicate is complete and truthful and mentors trusting that mentees will not play politics with either the information they receive or the relationships they develop. Successful
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THE ZWEIG LETTER AUGUST 2, 2021, ISSUE 1402
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